Grackle Zebra was heading for the fence and did an about-face???
NO WAY!<g>
SQUAWK SQUAWK
DOH!..barbed wire enema is required in that one's case IMO
INTC slowdown..the trickle down for Austin..funny dood that KELSO
Here's the poop on a new use for Intel's office
By John Kelso
Austin American-Statesman
Friday, February 23, 2001
I have an idea for a tourist attraction that would put Austin on the map: Intel Corp.'s World's Largest Grackle Perch.
Here's my suggestion. Shoo all the annoying grackles from our parking lots, yards and neighborhoods and let them sit on the unfinished Intel chip design center downtown.
Pretty chirpy idea, huh? Or we could get that artist guy Christo to wrap it.
Because of a slump in the semiconductor business, Intel is slowing down the construction of its 10-story, $124 million office building on San Antonio Street between Fourth and Fifth streets.
Intel told its contractor, DPR Construction Inc., to finish the concrete shell. But when the skeleton is complete in the next two months, Intel will decide whether it wants to finish the building, and if so, when.
The Intel project is part of Mayor Kirk Watson's Smart Growth program. Smart Growth is when you build straight up, instead of sideways, thereby not taking up space that could be occupied by trees, wildflowers, a bunch of yuppies from San Jose and those annoying deer. Under the old definition of Smart Growth, however, you were supposed to work fast and keep going until you were finished with the building. So maybe instead of Smart Growth or Fast Growth, this is a new kind of growth known as Half-Fast Growth.
Intel also hasn't decided whether to put an exterior "skin" on the skeleton of the building. So by April, we'll have this massive empty thingy sitting in the middle of downtown Austin.
Sounds like a great place for grackles to camp out and squawk, doesn't it? Ten whole stories of building shell in the middle of an urban setting. So my prediction is that as part of his Smart Growth program, Mayor Watson will hire a grackle-relocator at $80,000 a year to work with the pedestrian coordinator and move the grackles to the Intel project. I'm sure they'd be happy there.
"I think it's a great idea," said wildlife biologist Janean Romines of Texas Wildlife Damage Management Services, who estimates the local grackle population at half a million. "That way, people would stop complaining about them being all over town."
Grackles thrive in an urban environment. "They're just an animal that does very well in the same types of habitats we like," said John Herron, chief of the wildlife diversity branch of the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. "And they'll eat anything, almost. They'll eat buns and hamburgers."
The Intel shell also could serve as a home for buzzards. These carrion crunchers are roosting in large numbers on the city's electricity transmission towers, causing power sags. The way to solve this? Sprinkle roadkill at the base of Intel's empty project.
There is one drawback to this bird program. Grackles like to poop on your car. Intel intended to begin occupying the 400,000-square-foot building by November. But now that workers aren't moving in, the grackles won't have as many cars to poop on as they would have had if the building was occupied.
But that's not a major hang-up, because downtown is just one big traffic jam anyway, thanks to projects like Intel's.
So the birds will still have plenty of cars to bomb.
John Kelso's humor column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at 445-3606 or at jkelso@statesman.com.
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